


The Abridged History of Steam Engines

by molotovhappyhour



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Modern AU, blowjob reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:46:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2820842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovhappyhour/pseuds/molotovhappyhour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren's never been very good at subtlety, and maybe it's one of life's great tragedies. Or, on the other hand, maybe it's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Abridged History of Steam Engines

**Author's Note:**

> A secret Santa gift for [reaperwrites!](http://www.reaperwrites.tumblr.com) I hope you enjoy!

It’s the little things that get Levi the most, Eren has come to find.

He’s a romantic, which surprises people, but he’s a  _soft_  romantic—little things  _get_  him, wiggle around inside his chest and embarrass him, make his face turn red or his lips curve up in a smile with no sharp edges. Sometimes Eren even earns an embarrassed laugh that gives a glimpse of teeth, flicks his eyes to the left and to the floor. Eren is particularly proud of those.

Of course, that’s not to say that Levi doesn’t like the  _big_  things—it’s just that big things have to be declared.

For example—okay, for  _example_ , to get Levi to stay over, implying that he was welcome in Eren’s apartment wasn’t particularly obvious. And he’d been  _trying_  to be subtle, because  _someone_  had said “dude, you’re like a steam engine going full tilt into the side of a building. Leave something to the imagination and turn it down. Coast a little.”

Well  _coasting_  didn’t get Levi to stay the night at his place, that was for sure.

(So fuck  _you_ , Jean Kirschtein, you useless piece of shit.)

What  _did_  was slowly doing laundry at his place and reorganising his closet by colour, making drawer space for Levi and cleaning up the bathroom, cleaning out the cup for his toothbrush and thus giving Levi space should he ever want to leave one. And  _then_  he’d relearned to fold pants by using the hems at the bottom because that made the wrinkles, if there were any, into creases that made most pants look  _professional_ , even if they tended to be jeans.

(The good news is, of course, that he didn’t end up having to learn to do that with sweatpants. They’re much harder to handle that way.)

So, as the story goes, Levi had come over and noticed Eren’s change in—not so much  _cleanliness_ , because he’d tried to be better at keeping his mess to himself, buckling it down inside himself to save for finals weeks and last minute studying. Hm. It was more like he noticed that Eren had tried to make  _his_  organisational theme resemble Levi’s, at least a little.

“You colour-coded your closet?” Levi had asked, because he’s a  _snoop_ , and Eren had known that, been  _waiting_ for it.

“Yep,” Eren had replied, because,  _obviously_.

Blue-gray eyes had narrowed. “Uh-huh.”

“I also learned to fold pants so they  _crease_  instead of  _wrinkle_.” He affected Levi’s frown to make sure it was very,  _very_  clear he was joking—because he was. He  _liked_  the way Levi was, even though sometimes Levi didn’t. It’s what Eren’s for—to like the things he might not like about himself, because it’s  _Levi,_  hello, and therefore he likes it.

“Uh- _huh_.” This had made Levi frown. “You didn’t have to. Your shit is  _yours_ , and I didn’t want to—“ He’d made a face, and Eren had wondered where his plan had gone wrong.

(It went a lot like asking him out, in retro-retrospect. Levi had listed all the reasons it was a “stupid fucking idea” because he has a “plethora of neuroses” and “a mouth that would make a sailor apologise to his fucking mother.”

“Besides,” he had continued, as if giving a presentation, “I’m writing all the time, working and whatever. You could probably do better.”

Eren had rolled his eyes, tossed up his hands, and said “date me.”

Levi had stared at him and his ears had gone red. And then he had said, “okay.”

Eren might have loved him then.)

But, because even if he’d left the parking brake on inside his mouth, he supposed that he’ll always be a little bit like a steam engine going full tilt. And so he’d said, “I want you to stay over sometimes, but to do that I had to make my home like yours. Because you should be comfortable.”

Levi had paused and looked to the left at the floor, rolling his lips over his teeth. His ears had gone a little pink. And he’d cleared his throat.

“Oh,” he’d said.

And that’s what finds them here, in Eren’s apartment, curled up on the sofa with Eren’s heart rattling against his ribcage like a caged bird, pecking at his sternum in a panic. There are words that are scalding a brand onto his tongue, and he’s not  _a hundred_  percent sure how to say them. He doesn’t think the steam-engine thing works for stuff like this.

 _Hey Levi,_  burns behind his teeth,  _I love you_.

Eren wishes that, instead of being born with the need to say everything on his mind, instead of being born with  _no tact_ , he’d been born with a sense of  _finesse_.

But he wasn’t.

-

Two weeks after the revelation hits him across the face (in the middle of  _Love Actually_ , because Levi likes that movie and it always makes Eren get close to tears—but maybe that’s true of a lot of things), the bird his heart has become hasn’t calmed down, but he’s gotten used to it. He’s also gotten used to the burning in his mouth, though sometimes he gets the urge to stick out his tongue and examine it in a mirror, wondering if the words had branded themselves there, and maybe he won’t need to figure out how to say them.

(No such luck on that front. None at all.)

But adapting to the sensations had helped, a little. At least until he ends up in  _Levi’s_  apartment, somewhere that he’s never spent much time in, because he’s always afraid he’ll break something or drip his sticky personality onto the carpet and never be able to get it out.

( _I’m so sorry,_  he’d have to say,  _I literally cannot control anything._ )

But being here (and it smells spacious, smells clean, and smells like Levi—at least the sofa does, where he’d planted himself so as not to disturb anything) makes the bird do stupid things to the back of his throat, trying to get out and run away. Or scream. It’s a combination of both, maybe. Probably less “running away.” More “running toward.” Leaping before looking, is more than likely.

He’s not quite sure how well that would go.

“Do you want anything?” Levi asks, taking slow steps from the kitchen with a glass of water in his hand, waiting by the opposite armrest for Eren to either accept or deny a request.

“Nah,” Eren replies, which he considers a success, because he  _could_  have said  _I love you_ , which would have been really inopportune and out of fucking nowhere. So. “I’m good. But you could sit  _down_ , if you wanted.” He offers an arm for Levi to tuck himself under, and that gets him a roll of his eyes that are meant to keep the smile on his mouth a secret.

Eren savours both of them, so the eyeroll doesn’t go to waste.

Levi ends up tucking himself under Eren’s arm anyway, pressing his nose to Eren’s throat in a quick gesture of affection before he turns on the television.

Eren’s been sitting on his emotions for much longer than he knows what to do with, has been trying to do his best to convey it without bursting into flames or, alternatively, making himself look like an idiot.

( _“That’s not going to work out,”_ Jean would say, because he’s an asshole,  _“because you’re always an idiot.”_ )

He’d be right, though, you know. It  _isn’t_  working out.

So instead of saying anything (or thinking of anything, or thinking of  _doing_  anything), he brushes his lips over Levi’s hair, pointedly ignoring the 1960s classic  _Night of the Living Dead._

Kind of ignoring.

Not really ignoring.

“If  _I_  went to a cemetery and  _my_  parent popped out of the ground, I think I would drop dead.”

Levi snorts out a laugh and—there it goes—the bird in his chest falls down dead. “No, you wouldn’t. You’d probably aim a shot at your dad’s throat and the head would fall off.”

Eren wrinkles his nose, trying not to laugh, because speaking ill of the dead is a little less than  _acceptable_ —but it  _is_  just this side of funny. Grisha Jaeger coming back from the dead to express his disappointment form beyond the grave.

“That’d be an improvement, don’t you think?”

Levi’s head tilts up and his lips trace words against the line of his jaw. “I don’t know. Half of his genes are in  _your_  face, and you look good enough.”

The sound Eren makes coaxes a breath of laughter as Levi’s mouth finds his. “Good  _enough_? Sorry we can’t all be  _beautiful_  like  _you_.”

Levi laughs a third time like Eren had been kidding—he supposes it  _sounded_  like he was kidding—and Eren can taste it when he opens Levi’s mouth with his tongue. Can feel it on his teeth and sigh it out his own nose, feeling goosebumps rising on the back of his neck and rushing down his spine.

“I was serious,” Eren says, when both their mouths are a little bit looser and there’s a hint of kisses shared. “About you being beautiful.”

Levi snorts, and this time he  _knows_  that Eren wasn’t kidding. Does he need to rephrase? Or does it need to be less direct? Or—

“Shut up,” Levi murmurs, and pulls Eren close by his sweater. “Fucking ridiculous.” A pause that  _should_  be filled with more kissing but isn’t. Instead, Levi’s blinking at him, slow, eyes flicking over his face and lingering nowhere, though Eren can feel it like a touch.

“Uh,” Eren clears the sound out of his throat, because he’s never been good at sitting and waiting.

“Shut up,” Levi says again, this time softly, his thin fingers coming up to cup Eren’s face. (It’s not something Eren ever really asks for—because Levi can sometimes be nervous about his hands. They’re a little bit cracked from washing, a little dry sometimes, but Eren loves them anyway, and loves the way they feel against his face.) “I love you,” comes out of his mouth next, and his lips bend around the words like he adores them.

And the bird inside Eren’s chest comes back to life, more heart-shaped than before, though it’s threatening to go nuclear and turn him to ashes. “What?” He says, and his voice is much thinner than he’d like it to be. “What?”

Nervousness tucks itself away in the planes of Levi’s face, and his fingers twitch against Eren’s ear. “Uh?”

Eren lifts his own hand to curl his fingers around Levi’s. They’re warmer, because Levi’s hands are always cold, and Eren makes a sound. “You can’t  _say_  that.  _I_  was going to say that.  _I_ love  _you_. I was trying to figure out how to say it and you just go ‘I love you.’ Like it’s no big deal. That’s not fucking  _fair_ , I was gonna.”

Levi’s nose wrinkles and relaxes, surprise ghosting over his face before being smothered over by laughter. “Are you fucking  _serious?_ ” More laughter and Eren can feel his face going warm, like his eyeballs are going to boil. “You asked me to  _stay over_. You asked me  _out_. And you wanted to take  _I love you_ , too?” Levi pulls Eren’s face close, speaking against Eren’s mouth in a way that goes straight to his abdomen. “You’re a greedy little fuckhead, aren’t you.”

The bird that is his heart drops dead again. But in a different way. It makes his head foggy. “Yes,” he lowers his voice and forgets what they were watching. “Yes, I am.”

“I love you,” Levi repeats himself.

“I love you,” Eren replies, and his stomach drops like he’s at the peak of a rollercoaster.

They kiss again. And they  _both_  forget about the movie.

(Until Hanji bangs on Levi’s front door, enthused, their voice breaching the door—“ _Did you tell him?”_ they say, unaware that Levi is mostly half-naked and that Eren's mouth is poised at the junction of his hip and thigh, so close to sucking Levi off that Eren almost whines.

 _“Fuck,”_ Levi will say, very poignantly.

And Eren will laugh, breathless and enamoured.  _“After.”_

A smile, and then,  _“I love you.”_

A grin, and then, murmured against his stomach,  _“I love you.”_ )


End file.
